Sourdough saga with Peter Reinhart

Phase 1 / day 1

making the seed culture - whole-wheat flour, water and a bit of sprouted wheat flour. This will sit at room temperature for 48 hours.

A better result - Experimenting with sourdough

This time I used my own sourdough starter based on a recipe from Urban Farm. (Check out urbanfarmonline.com.) The process took about 2 1/2 weeks but from the look of the loaf I think it's worth it! Next up will be Peter Reinhart's method for whole grain sour dough.

Soured on sour dough

Substituting whole grains (pumpernickel and white whole wheat) for white flour produces fragrant, medium sour & tasty loaves but they are woefully flat. I used King Arthur prepared sourdough mixture the "French" variety. 

My home made starter is still fermenting and will be ready for initiation next week.

Dashi in a dash!

Using a recipe from the famous Japanese cook, David Tanis,(lol) I decided to dive into Dashi.  Basically it's a traditional base for Japanese soup using kombu, dried shiitakes, soy sauce, mirin, sake and a bit of sugar.  All the ingredients were on hand except for the sake, but it turns out that vermouth with a splash of rice wine vinegar is a good substitute.  

After a long simmer the broth is strained and voila, a clear flavorful broth with a whiff of the sea is ready for the next step - soup!  

Eggplant Pizza

Balcony Gardening in Beautiful Pennsylvania

From Lake Champlain,

  to Montreal, to Oneida, NY and now central Pennsylvania. In the two years since I last posted, we moved yet again and this time to central Pennsylvania.  It's a beautiful mostly rural area, home of Penn State University. Though we live in a third floor apartment in the "Victorian" village of Bellefonte we have become farmers!  We have a large west facing balcony that accommodates six planting boxes ("Earth boxes" earthbox.com).




We started out with 18 seedlings supplied by a good friend with her own greenhouse (courtesy of her professor handyman carpenter husband) comprising 6 varieties of tomatoes: purple, roma, beefsteak, paste, purple cherry and red cherry.  We "hardened" the seedlings by putting them out on the balcony during the daylight hours in April and also inadvertently contributed to the starling population who discovered our tender seedlings were quite delicious.  We ended with about 12 viable plants.

During the planting process, two seedlings ended up as compost, but 10 survived, 2 of each variety. Each earthbox holds two tomato plants; in the sixth box we planted two plants purchased from the local nursery, purple satin eggplants.  Here's a photo from May:

Now our balcony is a jungle:

Friday (July 26) we harvested our first eggplants:

There are dozens more to come and soon the tomatoes will be ripening.

TOO HOT TO COOK

At 7 am it's already 80 degrees; a few hours later it's 87!  Ugh.  It's definitely too hot to cook and almost too hot to eat.  ALMOST.  Luckily, preparing delicious food without cooking is easy when you belong to a CSA (community supported agriculture); in fact, it's required.  We purchased a "full share" from Common Thread Community Farm, located in Madison, N.Y (http://commonthreadcsa.com/) and twice a week we stop by the farm to fill our bags with fresh produce and herbs.  In this age of constant food recalls and E.coli outbreaks, it's reassuring to pick up our produce from a known and trusted local source. [Check out http://www.marlerblog.com/ for up to the minute information on  food poisoning outbreaks and recalls.]

This week we stopped by the farm and filled our bags with radishes (so sweet you can eat them like an apple), carrots, beets, hakurei (Japanese turnip with a sweet and mild flavor, a delicious, if unusual salad ingredient), scarlet salad turnips, fennel, scallions, bunching onions, kohlrabi, garlic scapes, green summer cabbage, swiss chard, kale and collards, head lettuce, arugula, radicchio, summer squash, zucchini, and cucumbers. Then we headed outdoors to the fields to the “pick your own” crops: snow peas, shelling peas, cilantro, dill and sunflowers.  Here's our stash from July 16 ~

And from July 19 ~ 

We supplement the bounty from Common Thread with summer favorites from the Farmers' Market in Hamilton.

 We've been eating amazing salads twice a day (yes, Mom, twice a day!) composed of leafy greens like bronze leaf lettuce, radicchio and arugula, thinly sliced veggies (fennel, zucchini, radishes etc) and dressed with an interesting vinaigrette.  Last week I whipped up a spicy mustard vinaigrette using mustard from  Fox Hollow Farm.  It's flavored with balsamic vinegar and fresh garlic and is delicious.  A great pairing with a sturdy summer vegetable salad.  

 Check out the recipe page for recent favorites and feel free to contribute!

Opposites Attract

Here is a recipe for a winning combination of thin spaghetti dressed with a thick chunky sauce.  It starts with the lowly canned tomato, which, when roasted, reveals its aristocratic airs. Here's a photo showing canned tomatoes that I oven-roasted with sliced onions and eggplant.  

Combine all the ingredients for a quick chunky topping or proceed with just the tomatoes as follows.

Thin Spaghetti with Chunky Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce

(4 servings)

Ingredients

Whole peeled plum tomatoes – large can (28 oz)

Garlic – 6 cloves or more to taste

Red Pepper flakes

Marinated Artichoke Hearts – small jar

Capers – 1 T

Black Olives (optional)

Shitake (or crimini) mushrooms, sliced and sautéed (optional)

Whole Wheat Spaghetti or Angel Hair Pasta

Preheat the oven to 350.

Roast the tomatoes - separate the whole tomatoes from the liquid (reserve) gently pressing out excess liquid, place in a shallow roasting pan (line it with parchment paper brushed with olive oil for easy clean up) and bake for about an hour or until the edges begin to brown.

Start heating large pot of water for pasta.

Sauté minced garlic in olive oil for a couple of minutes, or until fragrant.  Add red pepper flakes, and a pinch of salt, stir for another minute. 

Add the roasted tomatoes, bring to a simmer, add artichoke hearts and capers, cover and keep warm over very low heat.

Prepare pasta; while boiling, sauté sliced mushrooms with salt and pepper, adding minced garlic when the  mushrooms are nearly done.

Drain pasta, divide among warmed shallow bowls. Top with a ladle full of  the chunky roasted tomato sauce, top with sautéed mushrooms and black olives.  Dust with chopped parsley, if desired.

Yum!

Coping with King Kale

It's not delicate like royalty!  It withstands rough treatment: cold weather (frost makes it sweeter), long storage (guilty!) and rough handling (Frank, are you listening?).

With long stems and voluminous springy curlicue leaves, a head of Kale takes up a whole grocery bag.  When you get it home there's no way it's going to fit into the vegetable crisper.  It takes up half a shelf in my refrigerator.  Now what?  I've stumbled over the answer to that question for years and usually ended up throwing out the limp two week old (usually month old ) remains.

Not anymore!   This week, I wrestled the mass of resilient greens from my grocery bag and, skipping the refrigerator altogether, went straight to the chopping block.  I chopped off the stems, sliced off the thick ribs, cut the leaves into pieces, rinsed them under cold water, and made the most delicious soup:  Portuguese Spicy Kale Soup.   

 The recipe comes from Vegan Fire & Spice by Robin Robertson, my 'go to'  source for fiery, spicy plant-based dishes. 

The soup holds up for days in the refrigerator - the kale doesn't break down like more delicate greens.

Here's some valuable information about Kale from http://www.foodreference.com/, a website devoted to food facts and trivia.  "Kale resembles 'wild' cabbage, and may be the ancestor to all of our modern common cabbage varieties. Kale is a hardy and hearty green, and has been cultivated for over 2,000 years.  One cup of kale provides more than the daily requirement of vitamins A and C. It is also a good source of calcium and fiber. Like other greens, kale descends from wild cabbage that originated in Asia Minor though it is known for it’s popularity in Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Scotland. Kale was brought to the United States in the 17th century by English settlers. It is now a favorite in the southern United States where, like many cooking greens, it has been considered a poor man’s food.   Like most cooking greens, kale can grow in colder temperatures and withstand frost — which actually helps produce even sweeter leaves. Kale can also grow well in the hot weather in the southern United States and in poor soil. Kale is an excellent source of vitamin A, folic acid, and vitamin C and contains both protein and fiber."

No More Burgers for Bill

Hard to believe, I know, but it turns out that even Bill Clinton has decided to get off the meat and dairy train and focus on a plant-based diet.  Keenly aware of his own mortality after having a stent implanted, and looking forward to his daughter’s wedding and hopefully grandchildren, Bill Clinton vowed to slim down and improve his heart health. He adopted the essentially vegan diet advocated in the book The China Study.  The book, written by  T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II, looks at the results of the China Study, a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine.  The study showed that people with a diet of largely animal-based foods have more chronic disease, while those eating primarily a  plant-based diet are the healthiest.

Tara Parker-Pope wrote about The China Study in her January 7^th column in the New York Times.http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/nutrition-advice-from-the-china-study/?src=me&ref=health

Like Bill, I too want to live a long healthy life, not only because I have a beautiful two year old grand child whose life I want to be a part of , but because I want to live a long and vigorous life.  Switching to a plant based diet may seem hard, but it’s actually liberating.  Cooking has never been more fun. There are worlds of cuisine to explore and many, many wonderful cookbooks and websites to consult.  Plus to lose weight and keep fit, you don’t have to count calories or focus on portion size or what you can’t eat etc.  Just cook and eat unprocessed real whole foods!  Your tastes will change in matter of weeks.    Plus, kitchen clean up is a breeze!  No more  scrubbing the disgusting burnt on remains of cooked animal parts from your pots, pants and oven. No more disgusting odors in your kitchen, or in your garbage…

Tara Parker-Pope interviewed Dr. Campbell.  Here’s a portion, but check out the whole interview by accessing the article in The New York Times by clicking the link above.

Q.  So how should we be eating?

A.  I don’t use the word “vegan” or “vegetarian.” I don’t like those words. People who chose to eat that way chose to because of ideological reasons. I don’t want to denigrate their reasons for doing so, but I want people to talk about plant-based nutrition and to think about these ideas in a very empirical scientific sense, and not with an ideological bent to it.

The idea is that we should be consuming whole foods. We should not be relying on the idea that genes are determinants of our health. We should not be relying on the idea that nutrient supplementation is the way to get nutrition, because it’s not. I’m talking about whole, plant-based foods. The effect it produces is broad for treatment and prevention of a wide variety of ailments, from cancer to heart disease to diabetes.

Q. Do you advocate a 100 percent plant-based diet?

A. We eat that way, meaning my family, our five grown children and five grandchildren. We all eat this way now. I say the closer we get to a plant-based diet the healthier we are going to be.

It’s not because we have data to show that 100 percent plant-based eating is better than 95 percent. But if someone has been diagnosed with cancer or heart disease, it’s smart to go ahead and do the whole thing. If I start saying you can have a little of this, a little of that, it allows them to deviate off course. Our taste preferences change. We tend to choose the foods we become accustomed to, and in part because we become addicted to them, dietary fat in particular.
If we go to a plant-based diet, at first it might be difficult, but it turns out after a month or two our taste preferences change and we discover new tastes and feel a lot better, and we don’t want to go back. It’s not a religion with me, it’s just that the closer we get to a 100 percent plant-based diet, the better off we’re going to be.

Potatoes - The Rodney Dangerfield of Vegetables?

Every week I look forward to reading the Fitness & Nutrition section in the New York Times, especially Martha Rose Shulman's column Recipes for Health.   It is always informative, and she offers recipes for delicious, often vegetarian, food.  One of my favorite recipes is Provencal Potato Bouillabaisse or “Poor Man’s Bouillabaisse” which she posted on October 20, 2008. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/health/nutrition/20recipehealth.html?ref=fitnessandnutrition)

This regal soup is made with the simplest peasant ingredients - Yukon gold potatoes, onion, leeks and tomatoes (fresh or canned), and perfumed with the queen of spices, saffron!  The aroma is sensuous and the burnished orange tint of the broth is gorgeous.  Her recipe suggests slipping in whole eggs (one per person) during the last 5 minutes of simmering, but it is totally unnecessary.

 

Check out my version on my Favorite Recipes page. 

Haute Cuisine of Oats

My favorite breakfast cereal is savory steel cut oats with fenugreek, celery (yes, celery!) and fruit.  For two generous servings: In a sauce pan, combine 1/2 cup steel cut oats,  1 1/2 c water with a pinch of salt, 1 - 2 Tbs of fenugreek (seeds), finely diced celery (2 small stalks is enough) and a peeled and chopped apple or pear if you like. Bring to a boil, then simmer slowly for about 15 minutes.  The celery and fenugreek add earthiness and depth to the rather bland oat flavor and apple or pear adds a subtle sweetness.  When done, take the pan off the heat, cover and let sit for a few minutes.  To serve, dress it up with chopped walnuts, dates, raisins or figs, and then dribble some olive oil on top, dust with freshly ground pepper and, if you are really ambitious, add chopped cilantro.  If you've a sweet tooth or you are a traditionalist, like my husband, you'll skip the olive oil and pour on some warmed almond milk.  Either way - it's a great reason to leap out of bed in the morning!

Pizza - Ready for Prime Time

Pizza is a wonderful vehicle for vegetables.  My favorite recipe for pizza dough is on the recipe page - it's quick, easy, foolproof and delicious (and freezable). Make it simple with thin slices of fresh tomato, splash on a bit of olive oil and sprinkle with fresh herbs before serving.  Or dress it up with slices of roasted eggplant, artichoke pesto, caramelized onions, slivers of garlic, sauteed shitake mushrooms, whatever flavors you're craving!  With a delicious crust, roasted veggies and fresh herbs, cheese is superfluous.

Vegetable Fun

Here it is the first day of 2011 and I'm beginning a project inspired by my growing obsession with plant based eating.  Stay tuned for commentary, photographs, links, recipes and hopefully discussions with my followers/readers while I peel through the universe of vegetables and plant based foods.